The release of the Australian Government's comprehensive National Climate Risk Assessment has reinforced the urgency for Australia and the world to accelerate investment in our path to net-zero emissions.
The Australian Government's target is said to be both ambitious and achievable aimed at giving business and investors clarity and confidence. Our task now is to ensure our ambition does not wane. New measures to accelerate technologies via Future Made in Australia investments, carbon removal via the ACCU scheme, a Net Zero Fund as part of the National Reconstruction Fund, and initiatives to develop clean fuels and to reduce emissions are welcome and constructive steps to getting us where we need to be.
But we must keep in mind the National Climate Risk Assessment also predicts climate change impacts could cost Australia $40.3 billion every year by 2050, even if global warming could be limited to 1.5°C, noting Australia is already at 1.5°C.
The question confronting us now is: how do we rise to the challenges presented by overwhelming scientific evidence? We must not only reduce future emissions, but also deal with runaway emissions that are already locked into the atmosphere making some warming inevitable.
More, we must address this while ensuring that the economic burden of action does not fall unequally on communities and countries least capable. The consequences of inaction in terms of lives lost, property and ecosystems destroyed, and falling wages and standards of living will be experienced disproportionately by those with geographic or economic disadvantage.
A focus on adaptation will require more heat-resistant corals on the Great Barrier Reef, greater protection of flood prone communities, enhanced climate modelling and understanding, and new industries as alternatives for mining in regional communities.
Unfortunately, nature-based solutions for greenhouse gas removal such as afforestation, reforestation and carbon farming on their own will be insufficient. We will also need to develop and deploy a range of novel greenhouse gas removal and storage approaches, including direct air capture methods; ocean alkalinity enhancement; technologies that split CO2 into carbon and oxygen; mineral carbonation; enhanced mineralisation; blue carbon and more.
The Academy's 2023 report on greenhouse gas removal highlighted how current removal and storage technologies are not yet at the scale needed to make the difference we need now. Emissions reduction or removal technology either does not exist or is too expensive, so investment in research and science capability must be prioritised and scaled up. Yet, analysis of Australian Government spending on energy transition R&D - as reported to the International Energy Agency - has fallen by a factor of around four since it peaked in 2013 and has been flat for the past decade.
Spending on energy R&D through the R&D Tax Incentive shows a similar decline over the same period. This does not bode well at a time when energy transition needs to accelerate.
We only need to look to the story of solar energy to see what Australia has done before to see what is needed now, and that is investment in R&D. Australian scientists working on new solar technology were told it would never scale or be cost effective. Yet they persisted and attracted long-term research support from universities and funding agencies and ongoing investment in education, entrepreneurial talent and international collaboration. That persistence in the face of considerable scepticism resulted in affordable solar energy that is now a vital part of our economic and environmental future.
Australia can't act alone. Part of making greenhouse gas removal a national research priority, means elevating global research collaboration in this area, pooling resources, and using all our levers of diplomacy to make it an international priority too.
When your back is up against a wall, it's time to innovate. We have done it before and can do so again. With the R&D system under review by the government, there is a unique opportunity to prioritise investment in research and scientific capability.
It's not time to lower our targets to make them achievable. It's time to rise to the challenge. It's time to back our scientists and put them to work at a scale, focus and level of investment not seen since World War II.
Professor Chennupati Jagadish AC PresAA FRS FREng FTSE
President, Australian Academy of Science
Further reading
The Risks to Australia of a 3°C warmer world, Australian Academy of Science, 2020
A National Strategy for Just Adaptation, Future Earth Australia, 2022
Australia's Energy Transition Research Plan (AETRP), ACOLA, 2019-present
ACOLA AETRP Submission to Strategic Examination of R&D, ACOLA, 2025
